Filling the coffers

Daily Point

Endowment goals

Stony Brook University’s next president hasn’t been chosen yet -- but he or she already has a massive task ahead.

SUNY Chancellor Kristina M. Johnson told The Point that she has big goals for the next SBU president. Among the biggest: she wants the university’s endowment to more than triple -- and reach $1 billion -- within the next 10 years.

The university’s endowment now stands at just over $300 million. That already is three times as much as it was when outgoing President Dr. Samuel L. Stanley Jr. took office in 2009.

Johnson has other goals, too - higher graduation rates, more research, and a focus on growing the university’s graduate student population. Then there’s the importance of focusing the university on the careers of the future, including those related to machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Johnson has started the search process. She told The Point she hopes to soon talk with Long Island Association chief executive Kevin Law, who will chair the presidential  search committee. Law, a Stony Brook alumnus, already heads the Stony Brook Council -- the university’s advisory and oversight board, a position he has held since 2009. Johnson said there could be an announcement naming a new president early in 2020, who could be at his or her desk by July 1 of next year.

- Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall

Reference Point

'Something is wrong with the way we finance education'

Fifty-two years ago, voters on Long Island and around the state engaged in an annual tradition — voting on school budgets. But the result in May of 1967 was something never seen before: A record 43 school district budgets were defeated.

It was characterized as a “taxpayer revolt,” in a year when the state did not increase school aid after a generous hike the year before. News stories at the time have a familiar ring to them — low voter turnout, anger over taxes at all levels, school district officials claiming there is little they can do about “fixed” expenses like salaries while ignoring that they negotiate the contracts. The 43 rejections represented more than one-third of the Island’s districts.

Newsday’s editorial board wrote on May 27 that the defeats were “clear evidence that something is wrong with the way we finance education.”

And the problem, the board opined, was the unfairness of using property taxes.

“This system has produced great inequities,” the board wrote. “Homeowners in districts lucky enough to have strong business and industrial investment pay proportionately less than those living in mainly residential districts.”

The board noted that Horace Kramer, vice chairman of the Nassau Board of Assessors, had suggested having the state through its personal income taxes pay the basic costs of education, with property taxes paying only for “those extras that the taxpayers vote to support.”

The board deemed that and other suggestions for reforming public education financing as worthy of consideration.

Fifty-two years later, the sentiment still applies.

- Michael Dobie @mwdobie

Pencil Point

Stuck in the sidecar

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/opinion

Pointing Out

Back to her roots

Rep. Kathleen Rice made her name fighting drunken driving while she was the Nassau County district attorney from 2006 until 2015. Now she’s hearkening back to that success by introducing several DUI bills in Congress, including one that would demand that within 10 years all new cars be equipped with technology that will not allow drunken drivers to operate them. Another bill would require every state to pass laws similar to New York’s stern Leandra’s Law passed in 2010 that makes it a felony to drive under the influence with a child passenger.

It’s not the first time Rice has introduced the bills in Congress; that was in 2015. But it is the first time she’s done it as a member of the House majority, and it’s the biggest splash she’s made since her failure to support Speaker Nancy Pelosi cost her a coveted spot on the Judiciary Committee in January.

As a district attorney, Rice nabbed Long Island’s first DUI-related murder convictions in a case that led CBS’s “60 Minutes” to profile her work in 2008. During her tenure, DUI conviction rates in Nassau improved dramatically and she received a lifetime achievement award from Mothers Against Drunk Driving in 2015.

Despite Rice’s challenge to Pelosi’s leadership, some Democrats have touted the possibility of primary challengers to her from the left because she hasn’t been aggressively progressive in her legislative priorities. Ironically, it is Pelosi who wants to stop intra-party primaries.

Asked about Rice’s strategy both in D.C. and at home, Communications Director Michael Aciman said his boss “is using the opportunity of being in the majority for the first time in her congressional career to fight for bills she is passionate about issues that have always been a priority.”

- Lane Filler @lanefiller